Abstract
This White Paper presents the science case of an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), focused on the structure and interactions of gluon-dominated matter, with the intent to articulate it to the broader nuclear science community. It was commissioned by the managements of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) with the objective of presenting a summary of scientific opportunities and goals of the EIC as a follow-up to the 2007 NSAC Long Range plan. This document is a culmination of a community-wide effort in nuclear science following a series of workshops on EIC physics over the past decades and, in particular, the focused ten-week program on “Gluons and quark sea at high energies” at the Institute for Nuclear Theory in Fall 2010. It contains a brief description of a few golden physics measurements along with accelerator and detector concepts required to achieve them. It has been benefited profoundly from inputs by the users’ communities of BNL and JLab. This White Paper offers the promise to propel the QCD science program in the US, established with the CEBAF accelerator at JLab and the RHIC collider at BNL, to the next QCD frontier.
Highlights
Among the most intriguing aspects of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the relation between its basic degrees of freedom, quarks and gluons, and the observable physical states, i.e. hadrons such as the proton
While the measurements of quark transversemomentum–dependent parton distributions (TMDs) have begun in fixed target experiments, the gluon TMDs can only be studied at an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), and such studies would be unprecedented
The QCD dynamics associated with the transverse-momentum dependence in hard processes can be rigorously studied at the EIC because of its wide kinematic coverage
Summary
Among the most intriguing aspects of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the relation between its basic degrees of freedom, quarks and gluons, and the observable physical states, i.e. hadrons such as the proton. Even at low resolution, the proton contains both gluons and low-momentum quarks and anti-quarks (termed sea quarks) [3, 4] These must be generated by dynamics beyond the reach of perturbation theory, and their origin remains to be understood. The past decade has witnessed tremendous experimental achievements which led to fascinating new insights into the structure of the nucleon through semi-inclusive hadron production in DIS (SIDIS) and hard exclusive processes in DIS. These less inclusive methods enable us to investigate the partonic structure of the nucleon beyond one-dimensional space.
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